


Cathemeral

by BlueColoredDreams



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, College professors, F/F, Getting Together, Lucretia the library goblin and Maureen her doting wife
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-25
Updated: 2018-02-25
Packaged: 2019-03-24 02:01:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,955
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13801026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlueColoredDreams/pseuds/BlueColoredDreams
Summary: A late night research endeavor leads to more than just information.





	Cathemeral

**Author's Note:**

> Loosely based on [this post](http://zahraaxix.tumblr.com/post/142323829715/gillianandersunshine-omg-when-ladies-talk-about)! Happy AU day !

Maureen hoists her bag higher on her shoulder and studies the reference card handed to her by her advising professor. 

She sighs and then starts the trek through the library to the stairs to the archival floor; even when she was a student and spending hours upon hours in her university’s library, she disliked the eerie feel they got once the sun went down and people started trickling out. 

And that was years and years ago, before students brought in computers and phones to brighten the flickering fluorescent lights of the building, and before the school had put in hundreds of thousands of dollars into upgrading the building. 

She’s not a young woman worrying about her family while studying anymore, but the unease still lingers as she weaves through bookshelves and tables of drowsy undergrads and chattering graduates towards the dark stairwell that leads to the basement levels of the library.

She’s not a student anymore, she’s a professor and well credentialed and the dim lights of the archive aren’t  _ spooky _ . They’re frustrating. She hasn’t been down here since she was hired, and wouldn’t, even, if the acceptance of her research wasn’t hinging on one old as balls study. 

She marches up to the information desk, her lingering fear now replaced with the ire that sent her marching down here in the first place. 

“I need the backlog of journals from this publisher in these years,” she says, handing the librarian her card. “The first three issues, today, I would think. I need to go through all of them.” 

He looks up at her and raises an eyebrow. “Those are on microfiche these days,” he says dryly. 

“Yeah, I know,” Maureen sighs. 

“We don’t let people work the machine unattended these days, Dr. Miller,” he says, glancing at her reference card for her name. 

“What? Oh no,” Maureen groans. It’s almost ten— she didn’t expect that she needed to be watched. “I  _ work  _ here, surely…”

“Afraid not. Couple of kids busted one six months ago. We have a night shift, don’t you worry. If you’ll set up in room,” another glance towards his computer screen, “Room seven, our archival specialist will be with you.”

Maureen nods and gives her thanks; the viewing and study rooms are on the other end of the archives from the circulation desk, and the scent of paper and dust is heavy in the air. 

She sees only one other person, a student from the looks of it, their hand combing through their hair as they flip through at least three textbooks and a book written in a heavily embellished script. She’s no stranger to the throes of finals week-- between being a professor herself and having a son in his first year of undergrad, the symptoms are far too familiar. She doesn’t envy them. 

She finds room seven with no problems, flips on the light, and settles into an armchair that looks big enough for her to draw her feet into while she reads, if she was so inclined. A microfiche reader sits in the corner, begging to be turned on and used. It doesn’t look like those were upgraded at all when the library was.

Instead, she shrugs off her bag and starts to unpack her things. Her handwritten notes, her laptop with her growing thesis, and the small board of circuitry that she hopes will change how the world transmits information. 

“Dr. Miller?” a voice questions. 

Maureen looks up and waves to the woman in the doorway. She fits every image of the word  _ librarian  _ that Maureen could think of; if she’d passed her in the shelving, she probably wouldn’t look twice. Thin with light hair drawn back into a bun and sensible glasses and clothes. She exudes the sort of calm air that Maureen feels that good books should give people. 

“Hi, yes, that’s me,” Maureen says, scooting her bag closer to her feet. 

“I’m Lucretia, the archival specialist.” 

“Maureen Miller. You, uh, you look familiar. Do you teach here?”

Maureen holds her hand out and leans over the edge of the chair. Lucretia reaches out, a box of microfiche tucked under her other arm, and shakes her hand. Her grip is firm as she gives a dry smile. 

“I do,” Lucretia says. “Morning classes only, in the art department. We interviewed at the same time; we were at the same table during adjunct orientation.” 

“Goodness,” Maureen says, feeling her cheeks warm. “That was years ago.” 

“Just three,” Lucretia says lightly. She crosses the room and settles herself across from the microfiche reader. She flips it on, then leans over to turn on the projector. She hits a button on the underside of the desk with the reader, which dims the lights. 

She feeds the film in, and brings up the first page of the publication. She fiddles with the machine for a moment, her movements practiced as she turns her head back to look at the projection, slowly bringing it into clarity. 

“Now, Leon tells me you want to trawl through the entire backlog of this engineering magazine?” 

And that was the first time Maureen met Lucretia. 

* * *

  
In the months that follow, Maureen ends up in the archives at least twice a week. The initial feeling of the basement levels being creepy and dark fade, and she eventually just takes an entire room as her own, spreading her research out on the provided tables and settling into the armchair she first sat in, nursing coffee as her first real brush with the term  _ life’s work  _ comes into shape before her. 

Lucretia, too, makes it a habit to wander in and out of room seven even when the microfiche machine isn’t in use. 

At first, Maureen felt like she was being babysat, but she quickly realized that Lucretia was simply bored. During the night, no one came down to the archives, much less the restricted areas that Lucretia worked in restoring old books and records. Leon, the librarian at the circulation desk, left at midnight, leaving Lucretia on shift on her own. 

Maureen finds herself lingering longer and longer each time she visits the archives, simply because she enjoys the way Lucretia grins when she greets her. 

And then, she stays because she’s not stupid-- she can recognize a crush when she has one, and there’s really no harm at all in chatting with the cute, bored librarian at three in the morning. 

They talk about all sorts of things. Maureen explains her research, how she’s manipulating quantum mechanics to make a computer unlike any of the other quantum computers out there; Lucretia explains her work as an archivist and how she restores paper works. How she teaches morning classes only, much to the ire of her students who need her history and restoration class to graduate. 

Maureen shows her her circuit boards; Lucretia shows her art and something called a bone folder. Maureen tells her the story of how she married early, then dropped out of undergrad, pregnant and caring for her terminally sick husband and how long it had taken her to finally claw her way back into academics like she’d always wanted. Lucretia tells her the story of a chemist who was deeply unhappy with her life and turned to art. 

They send each other stupid cat videos and break into the long-closed campus off-brand Starbucks in the library for coffee. 

Even when she finally makes her breakthrough, when her research is solid and passes the first round of editing for publication, Maureen makes her way back to the deep recesses of the library night after night. 

* * *

She’s in her normal armchair in Lucretia’s office (stolen and drug in one late night when Lucretia needed to work instead of idly chat that has never made its way home to its original room), furiously refreshing her email. 

“No news?” Lucretia asks without looking up from the guilding she’s meticulously smoothing back into place. 

“None,” Maureen groans, bouncing her foot impatiently. “I should have heard something back from the committee. They promised to be done with the review by eight. It’s eleven.” 

Lucretia looks up, her eyes large behind the pair of magnifying glasses on her nose. “Did you check your spam?” 

“Shit, no,” Maureen breathes, nearly dropping her phone. 

Lucretia laughs and goes back to piecing foil onto the spine of the book. 

Maureen fumbles with her phone for a heart-stopping second, swiping out of her main inbox to her spam, and. “Oh, shit, oh-- shit.” 

“It’s there?” 

“Fuck.” 

Lucretia sets down her tools and rises from her chair a little, hovering between sitting and standing. “It’s there, isn’t it? Well?” 

“I… it got accepted,” Maureen breathes. She turns her phone towards Lucretia, hands shaking. “The article is going to be published next quarter, and they’re sending a team to duplicate the Cosmoscope for further testing and patenting.” 

Lucretia jolts up out of her chair with a shout and snatches Maureen’s phone from her hands. “Oh my god, and it was in your  _ spam folder _ !” she shouts. She crosses around her desk and hugs Maureen tightly, her cheek pressed against Maureen’s ear. 

“I know how much you wanted this,” Lucretia breathes. She squeezes Maureen tighter, then leans back and laughs. “Let me take you out for dinner, right now!” 

Maureen gapes up at Lucretia, who grins down at her, her gold-flaked fingers now cupping Maureen’s cheeks. They’re cool and smell faintly of ink and glue and Maureen feels dizzy with something more complex than joy. 

“Now?” 

“I know some holes in the wall that are open, just something to celebrate a little, you worked so hard-- or do you want to just celebrate with your son? Please, I have to do something for you,” Lucretia says, her hands still on Maureen’s cheeks. 

“I don’t want to go to dinner with you,” Maureen says before she even thinks. 

Lucretia’s face falls and she steps back suddenly, her enthusiasm leaving her like air from a popped balloon. “I, oh… I’m…” 

Maureen reaches out and catches Lucretia’s hands. She squeezes and looks up at her, her mind still dazed and fuzzy with everything. “I’d like to go on a  _ date  _ with you.” 

“Oh! Oh! Shit, oh, geesh. Okay, yes, I mean, that’s what I meant, but okay!” 

Maureen stands and squeezes Lucretia’s hands tighter, grinning so wide her mouth hurts. “Then, yes, let’s go,” she breathes. “Because I’ve had the dumbest crush on you for months.” 

Lucretia laughs and shakes her head. “Oh good, because I have too.” 

“I never noticed.” 

“I could say the same thing!” 

Maureen leans in close as Lucretia does, their foreheads resting against each other’s. “We’re smart women, how did we miss this?” 

Lucretia snorts and leans back, slowly sliding her fingers from Maureen’s; gold flakes fall between them as she dusts her hands on her pants. “I’m not taking that from the woman who forgot to check her spam email.” 

Maureen laughs and grabs her bag as Lucretia shakes off her spectacles and begins to clean her desk area. “That’s fair. So where are you taking me?” 

Lucretia looks up and grins. “Home, hopefully.” 

Maureen feels her face turn pink as she gapes at Lucretia, who hums as she finishes up her cleaning. 

“That was a joke. How do you like burgers and beer?” 

“That… yeah, good. I mean, I’d like to meet your cat one day.” 

Lucretia looks up with a raised eyebrow, a smirk curling across her face. 

“Your like, pet, the living cat, that meows. That you've shown me pictures of. That cat.” 

Lucretia giggles and switches off her desk lamp. “I know,” she says, shrugging off her white coat and setting it across her table. She strips off her gloves and sets them down as well, then gathers her purse and jacket from the hook behind her door. 

“Let’s go,” she says with a grin, holding out her hand for Maureen. 

If asked, Maureen couldn’t say what she ordered, or even how the food tasted; all she remembers is holding hands across the table with Lucretia as they shared food between them, laughing and flirting until the diner closed at twelve. 

And after that, they went for drinks, and then for a walk, and then to Lucretia's townhome, giddily unwilling to leave the other's presence. That, Maureen remembers quite well, though she keeps the details to herself. 

* * *

“Sorry I’m late,” Maureen says, breezing into her first lecture of the morning. “Pack everything right back up, there is class. It’s only eleven minutes. No pouting!”

“Doc, where were you on Monday?”

Maureen chuckles as she starts setting up her podium. “Home, took a few sick days,” she answers. 

There’s a few murmurs among the small class. 

“Are you okay? The flu’s bad this year,” says one of her potential research students. Maureen’s supposed to meet with him later that day; the way his nose wrinkles just slightly betrays his desire for research credit warring with his desire to stay healthy. “And that was only two days ago…” 

“Yeah, if you need more time we don’t  _ have  _ to have class,” another student pipes up.

Maureen snorts. “Calm down, I wasn’t sick,” she says. “My wife was.” 

There’s a beat of silence, then a collective shout. 

“What?!” “A wife?” “I’ve had five of your classes, and you’ve never said anything!” “Are you sure you won’t get sick then?” 

Maureen raises her hands against the onslaught of fifteen nosy seniors and grad students. 

“I’m sorry I didn’t put up a blackboard notice,” she says over them. “She needed to be taken home and I just stayed with her. She can’t take care of herself at all. Made her soup and just tucked her in.” 

Maureen laughs as one of her graduate students looks at her with an eyebrow quirked. “You can’t cook,” she says. 

“Well, when you’re sick, it isn’t like you can taste it, right?” Maureen chuckles. She flips on the projector and hooks it up to her laptop. “You can see one picture-- one! And then we’re moving on to finite square wells.” 

Maureen minimizes her Powerpoint, revealing her homescreen on her personal computer. 

“So this was our holiday card,” Maureen says. “My son, Lucas-- oh, judging from that groan, someone’s got him as a TA, I am so sorry. And that’s my wife! Isn’t she beautiful! We’ve been married for three years this fall! I met her six years ago doing research for the Cosmoscope conductors!” 

There’s a bit of laughter and a murmur of agreement. “The cat is Kitty, bless Lucretia, sometimes she’s just too literal for her own good. The dog is Spot, he just turned one. Lucretia… named him too.” 

Maureen laughs and shakes her head fondly. “She made me come in, said I was driving her nuts tinkering and couldn’t sleep. She works at night, most of the time, so she’s all sorts of weird about ambient noise.” 

“She looks familiar,” one of the students says. 

“Oh, yeah, she works in the library!” Maureen says happily. “See?” 

She pulls up the internet browser and types in the address for the university’s staff page. “Archive management and tech specialist. She also teaches a course on paper restoration and art history. She’s really smart and she’s talented, here, look, this is her gallery-- if you’ve been to the art department, she’s got pieces up on the third floor!” 

Maureen gazes at the screen for a moment, then sighs and closes it. “Anyway! I would love to talk about Lucretia all day, but there’s a test on Friday and I’d like to cover this before the exam. No, before you ask, it will  _ not  _ be on the exam, but the workshop module that’s due over the weekend  _ will  _ have these problem sets on them, and I can’t turn those off unless I call IT and I’m not doing that. So, finite potential wells!” 

She’s met with grumbling and sighing as everyone pulls out paper and pens and laughs quietly. She’ll have to tell Lucretia about this. 

* * *

Lucretia hitches her canvas bag higher on her shoulder, sighing as she weaves through the physical sciences building to the lecture hall Maureen had pitifully scribbled into her notebook the evening before when she’d left for her shift.

She really wants to go home and curl back into bed with Maureen, order chinese and sleep. She’s still not quite up to snuff yet, but Maureen had asked so nicely, and she does feel bad for making her miss class after a spotless career. 

She slips into the dark room, a little taken aback to already find it full of students with scantrons and calculators. 

“Uh. Hi,” she says, feeling the same flush of anxiety she always gets when she lectures. “Dr. Miller is unfortunately, out sick today. I’m going to be proctoring the exam for you. She’s left me some notes to read out for you and a… she says she gives a big hint, so I’ll give you that in a moment. I uh, am coincidentally, Dr. Miller--” 

“Oh my god,” a student breathes. “You do exist.” 

“P...Pardon?” 

Someone snorts and reaches across the aisle to shove their friend in the shoulder. 

“It’s just that no one knew Maureen was married,” says a student in the front row. “We sort of thought it was a joke?” 

“Oh. Uh,” Lucretia stammers, feeling her face warm. “We’re just a bit private. Caused a bit of a stir because the engineering department and the art department at the time were having a funding war, uh… Not that it’s… well. Anyway, she says the answer for twelve is forty two, please uh… good luck on the test.” 

She’s never, ever, subbing for Maureen again. 


End file.
